David G Kugler Photoblog

Warby Parker

davegkugler — Sun, 03 Feb 2013 19:46:50 +0000

We decided to have a little Sunday fun with trying out new Warby Parker glasses, i.e. Amy was looking for some new shades. They offer two awesome advantages to other makes: 1) you get an in-home trial of five pairs of your choosing; 2) for every pair purchased, one goes to someone in need. A few quick portraits and a lot of quirky smiles!

I shoot with Canon cameras. =] These photos were shot with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II 21.1MP Digital SLR. Lenses used: Canon EF 50mm f/1.2 L!

Thulani

davegkugler — Sun, 03 Feb 2013 13:47:11 +0000

Meet Thulani! We had been planning this shoot for quite a while, but only recently were able to fit it into everyone’s schedules. Thuli is about 5-6 months old, and one of the happiest (and strongest) babies you’ll meet.

It was an incredible shoot, and a lot of fun… it also gave me a little time to try out our new 50 f1/2L lens. I have owned the lens a couple of times in the past, but had subsequently sold it, something I don’t think I will every do again. =] In any case, onto the photos below…I may have clicked off ≥650 photos and here is a sampling!

Of course, Amy couldn’t get enough of Thulani. Fortunately his parents allowed her a bit of time to say hello. =]

I shoot with Canon cameras. =] These photos were shot with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II 21.1MP Digital SLR. Lenses used: Canon EF 35mm f/1.4L, and a Canon EF 50mm f/1.2 L!

Hello 2013!!

davegkugler — Sat, 02 Feb 2013 17:30:17 +0000

It’s been a while! since my last post, and a lot has been going on. The Holiday season was busy this year with work, travel, and writing a Ph.D. thesis. One thing I didn’t get to do as much of as I would like is photography…although I was still able to sneak in a bit. =] Here is a quick review of the highlights from the past few months.

Anderson. You may remember baby Anderson from back in September. Well, we got to do an update and awesomely-fun Holiday session in early December, at 2-1/2 months of age. Here are a few of my favorites:

Next is the random sharp-shinned hawk that dropped by outside our apartment window. It looked like he had a nice city rat lunch.

Then came Christmas. Amy and I took a trip to see my family this year and spent a wonderful week in Seattle. While there were frequent coffee shop visits and a bit of daily writing, we had a well-needed relaxing time hanging out with my nephew. He’s become quite the talented shutterbug himself.

Then there’s the new 50. =] I have owned and written about this lens before, but also reluctantly sold my earlier copies. Perhaps it was all the recent baby shoots where we were shooting indoors and 35mm was just a little wide (and I had no where near enough room for 85mm), but I missed the 50mm focal length dearly. Surprise, surprise, a new lens showed up right at the new year!

It’s amazing how truly thin your depth of field can be when shooting at f/1.2.

So far just a few test photos around the house, but I don’t think I will let this one go again.

I shoot with Canon cameras. =] These photos were shot with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II 21.1MP Digital SLR and a and a Canon EOS 7D 18MP Digital SLR. Lenses used: Canon EF 100-400mm f4.5-5.6L IS, Canon EF 35mm f/1.4L, Canon EF 50mm f/1.2 L and a Canon EF 85mm f1.2L II.

Shenandoah

davegkugler — Sat, 27 Oct 2012 03:02:50 +0000

After living in the Washington DC area for almost 4.5 years, I finally made it out for a hike in Shenandoah National Park. Of course, we owe it to our good friends Teddy and Jackie for dragging us out there. We stopped by a pumpkin patch on the way over, and then did an awesome hike at the peak of fall color! A few photos, of course. A few more on my Flickr.

I shoot with Canon cameras. =] These photos were shot with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II 21.1MP Digital SLR. Lenses used: Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L II, Canon EF 70-200mm f/4 L IS, Canon EF 35mm f/1.4L, and a Canon EF 85mm f1.2L II.

Anderson

davegkugler — Sun, 30 Sep 2012 20:34:23 +0000

More baby photos. =] Here is a few snapshots at 16 days of life. Meet Anderson. I am not so sure he liked the sound of the camera snapping away (thank you ‘silent’ mode!), but we definitely were still able to capture some beautiful moments with the new mom and dad.

I shoot with Canon cameras. =] These photos were shot with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II 21.1MP Digital SLR. Lenses used: Canon EF 35mm f/1.4L, and a Canon EF 85mm f1.2L II.

A Costa Rica Wedding

davegkugler — Sat, 01 Sep 2012 19:09:22 +0000

Well, I had a pretty awesome and amazing event this past August — my wedding. =] While I definitely tried to convince my [now] wife!! that it would be fun to try to shoot our own engagement photos and wedding, she had the better idea of us hiring another photog. We did, and his name is Teddy Wolff. As it is with anyone, it was an important decision for us on who we selected as a wedding photographer, and we couldn’t be happier with the outcome.

That said, I certainly brought the 5D Mark II along with me and did a little shooting of my own while we were there. ;-] If you recall, we absolutely love Costa Rica. On this trip we visited Manuel Antonio (famous for the national park of the same name) and Tortuguero. Here are a selected few of the 2700+ photos and video I took while there!

Please note: this is a large post…I apologize in advance if it loads slowly!

Manuel Antonio

Wedding Day

Oh yeah, the famous Marcus Eaton stopped by and played for a while!

The moment before…

And a few minutes after… eventually I was told to put the camera down.

Tortuguero

Jotham

davegkugler — Sun, 01 Jul 2012 19:01:46 +0000

Another round of baby photos, but this time with someone new: meet Jotham. We had a tough time scheduling the shoot, and ended up doing so without any electricity in the apartment thanks to the derecho in DC. Jotham was a bit sleepy when I arrived, but you could see all the personality in his awesome huge eyes. We shot a few family portraits while we were at it. =]

I shoot with Canon cameras. =] These photos were shot with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II 21.1MP Digital SLR. Lenses used: Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L II, Canon EF 35mm f/1.4L, and a Canon EF 85mm f1.2L II.

Ryan+Kim

davegkugler — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 09:52:32 +0000

April has been a busy month! I finally have a few minutes to post photos from an Easter-weekend wedding in Birmingham! Kim and Ryan were wed on a beautiful spring Alabama day. We had some direct sun for a few moments, but lucked out on beautiful lighting for the rest…and it was a gorgeous location. Watch for more photos on my Flickr soon.

I shoot with Canon cameras. =] These photos were shot with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II 21.1MP Digital SLR and a Canon EOS 7D 18MP Digital SLR. Lenses used: Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L II, Canon EF 24-105mm F4L IS, Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II, Canon EF 35mm f/1.4L, and a Canon EF 85mm f1.2L II.

Sarah+Jacob

davegkugler — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 01:21:48 +0000

A few teaser photos from Baton Rouge! If you remember Sarah and Jacob’s engagement shoot last November, then here is the continuation of the story! They were married March 23rd, 2012 on a beautiful Louisiana day!! The wedding site (Mount Hope Plantation) was stunning, as was Sarah in her dress. Enjoy the set, and also a few more on my Flickr.

I shoot with Canon cameras. =] These photos were shot with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II 21.1MP Digital SLR and a Canon EOS 7D 18MP Digital SLR. Lenses used: Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L II, Canon EF 24-105mm F4L IS, Canon EF 70-200mm f/4 L IS, Canon EF 35mm f/1.4L, and a Canon EF 85mm f1.2L II.

Weddings, Weddings

davegkugler — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 14:35:14 +0000

I’m heading out today for the second wedding of the season, down to the glorious Baton Rouge. It will be my first visit to Louisiana, and I’m super excited to see what all the fuss is about!

Tomorrow Sarah & Jacob become husband and wife — take a peak back to their early-November engagement session, wish them well, and stay tuned for sneak peaks later in the weekend!

Hacked =\

davegkugler — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 12:46:45 +0000

Yes, evenly lowly little blogs such as this one succumb to devious attacks at times. Unfortunately it appears that sometime in the past month or two we had an intrusion. It didn’t appear too overtly malicious (mostly re-directs), but it did insert some nasty code into every php file on the domain. Right now I am fairly certain that it has all been removed.

That said, I’ll be doing some maintenance over the next week and we may have some downtime. Lesson learned, implementing extra security is never a bad thing. If such a thing does ever happen to you, here are a few great guides on what to do (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and the next step 6).

6 Mar 2012, 9:30AM EDIT: NEVERMIND!, things are definitely still infected. The site will go down shortly until I can resolve the issue. Until then please don’t trust or download any files that are served from this domain. Currently it appears that re-directs are the primary problem, but until I post that it is totally clean please proceed with caution if you notice anything out of the ordinary.

6 Mar 2012, 1 PM UPDATE: OK, made some progress I think through the help of an exceptionally helpful script. If this happens to you make sure to modify the script to match your rogue code EXACTLY. Also, as always backup before running. More updates soon.

6 Mar 2012, 3:30 PM UPDATE: OK, another round of ‘I think things are better.’ Relying a bit on Securi’s SiteCheck Scanner to ensure files are cleaned. The personal blog passes now, as does the wedding blog… still some foreign js hiding out here (although the majority is certainly cleaned).

9 Mar 2012 UPDATE: I decided to give it a couple of days to ensure nothing was left behind and re-spawned itself. As of two days ago I believe we are CLEAN. We pass the scanner listed above, and after reinstallation of WordPress, all plugins, and careful cleanup of the customized theme I can see no signs of the code in any of the php files that were infected. Whew. If this every happens to you, please feel free to send an email. The “Walker” script linked above was a life-saver — cheers to you sir.

Baby Corwin

davegkugler — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 01:03:29 +0000

I haven’t shot baby photos in quite a while! That said, last week I was asked by one of the post-docs in the adjacent lab to photograph the newest addition to their family. Meet Corwin.

Corwin was an astonishing 10 days old! Precocious (he obliged to me holding him for quite a while), and into cameras [shutter clicks at least]…Corwin turned out to be quite the model. A few photos of this brand new life.

I shoot with Canon cameras. =] These photos were shot with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II 21.1MP Digital SLR. Lenses used: Canon EF 35mm f/1.4L, and a Canon EF 85mm f1.2L II.

DC Auto Show

davegkugler — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 09:10:11 +0000

This past weekend I had a chance to make it down to the 2012 Washington Auto Show, a yearly event at the DC Convention Center. Of course, they had an amazing spread of about everything you could imagine; including the latest models from both domestic and foreign manufacturers, select concept cars, and models (girls) + iPads galore. Similar to many, I imagine, a graduate student stipend doesn’t necessarily reconcile with one’s auto preferences. Despite this shortcoming, it was very cool to see all the beautiful vehicles on display.

For the auto geeks amongst us, my favorites were the newest BMW M5 and Audi RS5. A few photos.

I shoot with Canon cameras. =] These photos were shot with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II 21.1MP Digital SLR and a Canon EOS 7D 18MP Digital SLR. Lenses used: Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L II, Canon EF 24-105mm F4L IS, Canon EF 70-200mm f/4 L IS, Canon EF 35mm f/1.4L, and a Canon EF 85mm f1.2L II.

The web goes dark

davegkugler — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 13:04:10 +0000

If you haven’t read about SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) or PIPA (Protect IP Act), please do so now. These bills propose harmful changes to the way the web works, and how some of the most innovative companies operate. They remove due process, promote needless and expensive lawsuits, and [mostly] they entirely miss the mark on doing what they say they are supposed to — stopping piracy.

Look around the web today, and you will see things a bit differently. Wikipedia, Craigslist, and WordPress are dark. Numerous others have put up education and protest links. Can you imagine a day without Google, or Twitter, or Facebook?

Read more about a few selected individual efforts below, and make your voice heard.
- Google
- Flickr
- Vimeo
- Arstechnica
- et. al.

Napa, 30 & engaged!

davegkugler — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 17:00:45 +0000

Another catchup blog, but an important one. I recently turned 30, doh. We took it in as best as we could. In fact, Amy turned 30 also. The bigger news is that we coupled it all into a fabulous weekend get-away to Napa, CA…and we got engaged! Whew!!

It was a pretty incredible story. The date was easy enough to remember; we flew out to Napa on 11/11/2011. After a bumpy/rainy flight in, we made our way on the one hour drive from SFO to Napa. The next morning we awoke to a perfectly blue sky (and it stayed that way the rest of the weekend). We visited a number of amazing vineyards, including: Cakebread, Inglenook (i.e. Francis Ford Coppola’s Rubicon Estate), Robert Mondavi, Domaine Chandon, Behrens Family Winery (my favorite of the lot), Keenan Winery, Schweiger Vineyards, Artesa Winery and Gustavo Thrace. So just a few. We may have also brought back [more than] a few bottles to remember the occasion.

As always, plenty of photos to share! It couldn’t have been a more perfect time to visit. More on my Flickr.

And of course… a couple of pre- and post-engagement shots.

I shoot with Canon cameras. =] These photos were shot with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II 21.1MP Digital SLR and a Canon EOS 7D 18MP Digital SLR. Lenses used: Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L II, Canon EF 24-105mm F4L IS, Canon EF 70-200mm f/4 L IS, Canon EF 35mm f/1.4L, and a Canon EF 85mm f1.2L II.

Sarah+Jacob Engagement

davegkugler — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 16:18:46 +0000

Catching up on a few posts! This one is from early November. Sarah and Jacob are a couple of close friends. They wanted a few ‘DC-themed’ engagement photos, so we made our way down to the National Mall. We totally lucked out on weather, and were fortunate enough to get a beautiful night and an amazing sunset after a week of rain!

More on Flickr!

I shoot with Canon cameras. =] These photos were shot with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II 21.1MP Digital SLR and a Canon EOS 7D 18MP Digital SLR. Lenses used: Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L II, Canon EF 24-105mm F4L IS, Canon EF 70-200mm f/4 L IS, Canon EF 35mm f/1.4L, and a Canon EF 85mm f1.2L II.

National Zoo!

davegkugler — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 03:39:43 +0000

It is almost fall, meaning it is almost my favorite time to visit the National Zoo. We are finally into the sub-90F weather and the animals are active and about — too bad the red panda exhibit is still under construction. Hopefully a few more visits before it gets too chilly out and the leaves all drop. A few from today (more at Flickr).

I shoot with Canon cameras. =] These photos were shot with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II 21.1MP Digital SLR and a Canon EOS 7D 18MP Digital SLR. Lenses used: Canon EF 24-105mm F4L IS, Canon EF 70-200mm f/4 L IS, Canon EF 100-400mm f4.5-5.6L IS, and a Canon EF 35mm f/1.4L.

Turner Kugler Law, PLLC

davegkugler — Sat, 19 Feb 2011 19:03:28 +0000

So perhaps a modest twist from photography, but I was recently asked to code a simple website for my brother’s law firm. Although he has 21+ yrs of experience, he just went out on his own — Turner Kugler Law, PLLC is his startup focusing on legal services in the NW, primarily the Seattle-Tacoma, Puget Sound and Western Washington areas.

How fun. It has been a while since I coded in html/css. Struggled at first, learned a bit, and in the end added a custom font. It turned out to be a nice weekend project. Of course, being family the photography comes gratis. Check out the site, and a couple of my old favorites that we used for the headers.

Costa Rica!

davegkugler — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 03:30:22 +0000

2010 has been a trying year. PhD candidacy exams, lots of personal struggles/challenges, travel for work, numerous seminars to give and LOTS of studying. In August, we took a break. It was so desperately needed…we were very fortunate, and learned that Costa Rica is a simple 6.5 hr plane ride away from DC. Wow!

Our trip was broken into 3 sections:
1. Aug 11-14 | Central Pacific: Quepos/Manuel Antonio National Park
2. Aug 14-17 | Guanacaste: Monteverde Cloud Forest Biological Reserve & Arenal Area
3. Aug 17-18 | San José

If you ever have the opportunity, Costa Rica is a beautiful and relatively affordable destination. For tips or recommendations feel free to email.

Enough with the text, here are the photos. As usual, many more can be found in my photo-stream on Flickr (click here to jump).

I shoot with Canon cameras. =] These photos were shot with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II 21.1MP Digital SLR and a Canon EOS 7D 18MP Digital SLR. Lenses used: Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L II, Canon EF 24-105mm F4L IS, Canon EF 70-200mm f/4 L IS, Canon EF 100-400mm f4.5-5.6L IS, and a Canon EF 35mm f/1.4L.

Holly+Justin

davegkugler — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 03:03:27 +0000

The second fall..Seattle..wedding I shot in 2009! Who says graduate school keeps you busy? Holly is an old [old] friend from Idaho. And apparently the cool thing to do is to move out of ID and up to Seattle (it really is). Well, long story short, Holly met an amazing guy — Justin — in the NW and they let me share in their day.

Who says it rains in Seattle? We couldn’t have asked for a glorious and beautiful September day! A few photos!!

Jeff+Krista

davegkugler — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 02:53:46 +0000

Two incredibly beautiful people, in every aspect of those words — and two of the kindest people you will ever know! Married 30 Aug 2009 in a Seattle-area wedding. Quite a day, including minor ferry accident and all. As always everything went off without a hitch. =]

A few favorites (more here!).

Oh my!

davegkugler — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 02:41:38 +0000

It has been A WHILE since an update. I am currently starting the third year in my PhD program at Johns Hopkins and the National Institutes of Health, and the past year (especially) has been busy. All is well though, and I look forward to more updates soon.

First things first. Look for a quick few updates on highlights of the last 1-1.5 years: some wedding shoots and maybe even a bit of travel!

Unibody Macbook Pro

davegkugler — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 06:36:19 +0000

OK, OK, so this isn’t explicitly a camera topic; however, it is what I edit my photos on (an Apple). The old Macbook Pro was doing well and good, but my dad decided he wanted a laptop and it was a good excuse to get a little bump in speed and an updated machine (other machine is in the mail to him now). Surprisingly little has changed on the insides in the past 2.5 years that I had the old machine — now: a little more speed, a little more storage, and a little sleeker look. Sounds good.

So to photos, and where things stand. Sadly I didn’t do the side-by-side precision testing before boxing up the last-gen laptop. But here are a few numbers in photo terms on the new one: from a cold boot Photoshop CS4 loads in 5 seconds (if you quit it and re-open drop that to 2 sec). Lightroom 2 in the same manner loads in 6 seconds (and 3 secs with the quit/re-open maneuver). Speedy. Processing is definitely sped up as well; although, as with any computer (even a Mac Pro w/ 8Gbs of RAM) I can bring it to a crawl if I really want to. That said, a nice tidy boost is appreciated when editing 16.7 MP images. If you do the math and visualize the 30+ hrs of rendering time the 4122 photos from my last wedding took to process from RAW to JPEG w/ settings and compare that to some increased speed, well that is quite a bit of saved time.

OK, closing remarks. I am extremely impressed to date with the new unibody. It is solid, rigid, and performs. The new LED LCD made my old CCFL look like it was off. It is very bright. Glare is definitely there with the switch from mat to glass, and I will have to accustom to seeing my ugly mug all the time. You tune it out after a bit. The microphone is much more sensitive (the better to record my thoughts, classes, and chat with), and the speakers are equally louder. The smarter touchpad is great!, and means real four-finger fun, zoom, and multi-directional pan. Awesome. If I had a “highly recommended” sticker, it would be placed on this mini-review. Love. It.

Unibody Macbook Pro Specs:
15.4″ Glossy LED LCD, 1440×900
2.8 Ghz Core 2 Duo (T9600, 6M Cache)
4 GB DDR3 1066 Mhz SDRAM
320 GB HD (SSD, someday)
512 MB GDDR3 NVIDIA 9600M GT (+ onboard 256 MB NVIDIA 9400M)

Stock Photography

davegkugler — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 22:58:15 +0000

Alternative title: Why you should try to sell your photos! So recently I have decided to try my hand at stock photography; to enter this venture I have chosen Shutterstock. I heard about it through a few fellow photographers, who had good fortune. There are alternatives out there (and no reason to pick just one!), but I will tell you about my experience to date and maybe a few tips & tricks on the approval process (at least what has worked for me!!).

The process. So you want to be a stock photographer. You might think to do so will hamper your creative freedom, and you might be partially correct. Things for sale need to have “commercial value.” This to a photographer (or least to me) sounds fairly arbitrary, but essentially you need to put yourself in the place of a graphic designer — find images that convey a message, show an object, describe an event, or really anything that you could picture in an ad. This turns out not to be as challenging as I initially thought, but what you do need to make sure is that your images are up to par.

First step: LOOK AT EVERYTHING AT 100%, PERIOD. I pixel-peep on every image I take, and strive to maximize image quality, to reduce noise, and to make things contrasty enough to catch someone’s eye. Think of trying to be able to produce the largest print you ever imagined…now treat your file that well. The photo reviewers pixel-peep also, so make sure your images have no noise, no sharpening artifacts, no sensor dust, or any other abnormalities (white balance errors, chromatic aberration, etc etc, they all matter)! Otherwise, standard things seem fine — I upload in an sRGB color space as JPEG at full quality (least compression). Tagging and categorizing your photos is the next challenge. If you use Flickr this is pretty easy; I mostly free-associate and type whatever comes to mind.

The initial approval process with Shutterstock requires 10 images to be submitted for approval — you need 7 of 10 to make it through. Choose your best, have releases signed if they include people (forms available), and one dirty trick I do is to size the image down slightly if they have a little noise (minimum requirements are 4MP, my images range from 8.2-16.7MP and give reasonable room to do this). I am very new to the process, but with high hopes and reasonable results to date. Here are a few samples of what has made it through.

My latest images for sale at Shutterstock:

My most popular images for sale at Shutterstock:

So try your hand! Here is the Photographer’s link to Shutterstock. And here is Subscribers link to Shutterstock if you want to subscribe and shop (that is OK with me too). =]

Obama Inauguration Kickoff

davegkugler — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 19:54:16 +0000

We are one. This was seriously cool, and probably the most historic thing I have participated in. Yesterday (18 Jan, 2009), HBO hosted the Inauguration Kickoff event for Barack Obama on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC. The title of the event was We are one celebrating our nation as we come together to heal after the past many years of increasing difficulty and hard times. It was broadcast live and free-to-view in HD on HBO.

The event featured performances by: “Beyonce, Mary J. Blige, Jon Bon Jovi, Garth Brooks, Sheryl Crow, Renee Fleming, Caleb Green, Josh Groban, Herbie Hancock, Heather Headley, Bettye Lavette, John Legend, Jennifer Nettles, John Mellencamp, Pete Seeger, Shakira, Bruce Springsteen, James Taylor, U2, Usher, Will.I.Am, and Stevie Wonder.” Also, celebrity appearances included “Jack Black, Steve Carell, Rosario Dawson, Jamie Foxx, Tom Hanks, Ashley Judd, Martin Luther King III, Queen Latifah, Laura Linney, George Lopez, Kal Penn, Marisa Tomei, Denzel Washington, Forest Whitaker, and Tiger Woods” who excited the crowd and gave historical perspective reading famous quotes.

More information about the event, and the others accompanying Obama’s Inauguration can be found here. Here’s a few photos, with many more on my Flickr. GObama!

EDIT: Here’s a 180º panorama. Check out the large version to see just how many people were there!